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Pouring and sprinkling having taken the place of immersion in England, baptism came to mean another thing from its former self; the words wash and washing naturally changed to adapt themselves to the new ordinance and to the theology by which it was interpreted. Hence, Baxter speaks of babes who had water poured upon them, and so were washed. In keeping with the change of the ordinance, P. de Witte asks: ‘Ought we not again to bring in dipping as the Muscovites and others did?’ and answers: ‘It is not necessary, because washing is done with sprinkling as well as by dipping.’ Until the Puritan divines returned from Geneva, they held the idea that tropical washing was the consequence of being overwhelmed, just as wetting is the consequence of immersion. Wickliff had so used the word in translating Mark 10:39: ‘Ye shall be washed with the baptism in which I am baptized.’ And it is specially interesting to note how reluctantly the English people received the new sense of the word wash, in association with sprinkling in baptism. Not being able to see how that act could express the thought of cleansing without the full dipping, some resorted to the absurd idea that rubbing the water in would supply the place of immersion, in efficacious washing, and so we have several accounts of the adoption of this practice. P. Barbour’s Discourse, 1642, records a striking example of this absurdity. He pronounces this sage opinion on the efficacy of rubbing, p. 14: ‘All do or may know that a thing dipped in water is not, therefore, washed or made clean, neither is washing always intended in the dipping of a thing in water. Indeed, washing to make clean is by the way of dipping in many times, that by putting the thing into water and rubbing of it or the like it might be cleansed, which I conceive it was the way of their washing in those times and countries where Baptists first began.’

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A HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS

By Thomas Armitage

1890

[Note from the publisher. This valuable out-of-print book was scanned from an original printing and carefully formatted for electronic publication by Way of Life Literature. We extend a special thanks to our friend Brian Snider for his labor of love in diligently scanning the material so that it might be available to God's people in these days. For a catalog of other books, both current and old, in print and electronic format, contact us at P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, [e-mail] (e-mail), http://wayoflife.org/~dcloud (web site).]

[Table of Contents for "A History of the Baptists" by Thomas Armitage]

BAPTISTS OF GREAT BRITAIN

IMMERSION IN ENGLAND -- PERSECUTION CONTINUED

Let us now look at the practice of the people commonly known amongst the English as Baptists, par excellence. In the absence of definite information the inference would be warranted, that their administration of the rite corresponded to that which they saw in the State Church; for their chief controversy with their brethren at that time did not relate to the mode, but to the subject of baptism. Their important word was not ‘how,’ but to ‘whom’ should baptism be administered? Their foes called them ‘Anabaptists,’ those who baptize again. Their offense, as a general thing, was not that they administered this ordinance in a different way from other Christians, but that they baptized on a confession of faith those who had been ‘baptized’ in infancy. There was no sharp controversy in the earliest literature of the Anabaptists on the method of baptism, although we have some clear definitions of baptism and some cases of immersion. But, as a rule, in the maintenance of baptism on personal trust in Christ, they said little of immersion until they saw it vanishing away before human authority, even in England, where it had maintained itself so long. Step by step, the Reformation in England was feeling its way first to the naked and radical question: Who shall compose the Church of Christ? The Roman yoke was broken, but in their efforts to rid the nation of superstition the Protestants were divided. The Puritans were still in the State Church, and many of them wished to stay there; but the Baptists took the ground that the pale of the Gospel Church could never be measured by the boundaries of the nation. The Church must be made up only of Christians, and the settlement of that question must radically change the British Constitution. The consequence was that they threw themselves first into the recovery of a purely spiritual Church, and then into the restoration of apostolic immersion. That the struggle was hard and hot is seen in the fact that about two hundred works, pro and con, were issued in the seventeenth century on the questions of infant baptism and dipping. Many of these are preserved amongst the ‘King’s pamphlets’ in the British Museum, and others are lost. Public oral disputation on these subjects was rife also, in the hands of noted champions. One platform dispute was held in Southwark, 1642, between Dr. Featley and Mr. Kiffin; another in London, 1643, in which Knollys, Kiffin and Jessey took a part. T. Lamb and others held a third debate at Turling, in Essex, 1643; and a fourth was had in 1647, at Newport Pagnall, by J. Gibbs and R. Carpenter. S. Fisher and several clergymen held a fifth at Ashford, in 1649; and in the same year another took place at Bewdley, between Richard Baxter and John Tombes. Similar contests occurred between Dr. Chamberlain and Mr. Bakewell, in London, 1650; H. Vaughan, J. Craig and J. Tombes, at Abergavenny, in 1653; and still another at Portsmouth, in 1698, between Dr. Russell and Samuel Chandler, ‘with his majesty’s license.’

At the very time of these public disputations the Westminster Assembly met, by order of Parliament, and was in session from 1643 to 1649, and its discussions were sorely disturbed on this question of ‘dipping.’ Yet, according to Neal, there was not one Baptist in that body. Dr. Lightfoot, one of its leading members, kept a journal of its proceedings, and his entry for August 7, 1644, tells us of ‘a great heat’ in the debate of that day, when they were framing the ‘Directory’ for baptism, as to whether dipping should be reserved or excluded, or whether ‘it was lawful and sufficient to besprinkle.’ Coleman, called ‘Rabbi Coleman’ because of his great Hebrew learning, contended with Lightfoot that tauveleh, the Hebrew word for dipping, demanded immersion ‘over head;’ and Marshall, a famous pulpit orator, stood firmly by him in the debate, both contending that dipping was essential ‘in the first institution.’ Lightfoot says that when they came to the vote, ‘So many were unwilling to have dipping excluded that the vote came to an equality within one, for the one side was twenty-four, the other twenty-five; the twenty-four for the reserving of dipping, and the twenty-five against it. The business was recommitted,’ and the next day, after another warm dispute, it was voted that ‘pouring or sprinkling water on the face’ was sufficient and most expedient. How did this Presbyterian body, without a Baptist in it, come to such ‘a great heat’ on dipping if it were a novelty and an innovation amongst them in England?

It is a significant fact also that S. Fisher, in his ‘Anti-Rantism,’ complains that at Ashford and elsewhere the clergy would discuss only the ‘subjects,’ carefully avoiding all discussion of the method of baptism, a thing which they would have been slow to do if they had known that the ‘so-called’ new baptism or immersion was, as such, an innovation in England. This they were careful never to charge. Dr. Funk, Catholic professor at Tubingen, dates the rise of sprinkling and its first prevalence thus: ‘Throughout the fifteenth century, in decrees of synods, immersion is referred to as the general and orderly form of baptism.’ Of sprinkling he says: ‘The first sure evidence of its practice is met with at the Synod of Florence, when the Archbishop of Ephesus made it a subject of complaint against the Western Church’ (1439). When it was introduced immersion long resisted it as a new form, and this scholar says that when water was poured upon the head the rest of the body was still immersed. On the general subject, he quotes from the Synod of Passau, 1470; of Wurzburg, 1482; of Besancon, 1571; of Aix, 1585; and Caen, 1614.

These discussions had produced such a growing distrust in the public mind on the subject of infant baptism, as early as 1661, that for the first time a form of service was introduced into the Prayer-Book for the public baptism of those of riper years. The preface honesty states the reason: ‘By the growth of Anabaptism through the licentiousness of the late times, crept in amongst us, is now become necessary, and may be always useful, for the baptizing of natives in our plantations and others, converted to the faith.’ The Baptists were assailed for attempting to restore the ancient state of things as if they had committed an unheard-of crime, and but for the history and literature of many centuries the clamor might lead to the supposition that immersion had never been heard of until they sought to restore the normal English baptism. They were called a ‘New-washed company,’ were charged with bringing in a ‘new dipping,’ a ‘novelty ‘ and an ‘ invention,’ with being ‘led away of the devil,’ with ‘murdering the souls of babes,’ and a few other things of the same gracious sort. Bigotry and hate could not have raised a greater howl if immersion had then been practiced on English soil for the first time. And yet even Dr. Featley is compelled to say in his ‘Clavis Mystrica,’ 1636: ‘Our font is always open, or ready to be opened, and the minister attends to receive the children of the faithful, and to dip them in the sacred laver.’ Even in our day an attempt has been made to leave the onus of invention upon the English Baptists, in the matter of immersion, because simple-hearted Barbour happened to say, in 1642, that the Lord had raised him up to ‘divulge the true doctrine of dipping.’ Yet, his entire treatise discusses the question, ‘What is the true ordinance of the dipping of Christ, and wherein does it differ from children’s dipping?’ In the very sentence which speaks of divulging the doctrine he says that it ‘was received by the apostles and primitive churches, and for a long time unavoidably kept and practiced by the ministry of the Gospel in the planting of the first churches.’ The word ‘divulge’ was not confined at that time to the sense of disclosing or discovering a thing, as now, but it meant primarily to ‘publish.’ Henry Denne was immersed in 1643, and preached the Gospel from that time onward; and yet, in sending him forth on a special mission, the Baptist Church at Fenstanton, October 28, 1653, says that, ‘On that day’ he ‘was chosen and ordained, by imposition of hands, a messenger to divulge the Gospel of Jesus Christ;’ surely not to make it public, as a new thing. Barbour speaks of the ‘dipping of infants’ more than a score of times, as a thing with which all were familiar, but he says: ‘That dipping whereof we speak is burying or plunging a believer in water, he desiring of this ordinance.’

There is less clear and decisive evidence of the practice of immersion amongst the English Baptists from 1600 to 1641 than might be desired, but the passage cited from Leonard Busher, and other proofs, render it certain that they did not first practice it in 1641. It is quite clear that some of them practiced affusion up to that time, while some immersed, but after that date affusion seems to have ceased amongst them and only immersion obtained. The case of John Smyth, who baptized himself in 1608, may be conceded to have been an affusion, and yet this is by no means certain, neither has his immersion been proved. After all that Dr. Hoop Scheffer and others have said on the subject, passages from Smyth’s three Confessions of Faith are strangely in conflict with the thought that he practiced aspersion upon himself for baptism. Article XIV in his Latin Confession describes baptism as ‘the external symbol of remission of sins, of death and resurrection.’ Article XXX in his English Confession says: ‘The whole dealing in the outward visible baptism of water setteth before the eyes, witnesseth and signifieth, the Lord Jesus doth inwardly baptize the repentant, faithful man in the laver of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Ghost, washing the soul from all pollution and sin, by the virtue and merit of his bloodshed.’ The confession of himself and friends, published after his death, Article XXXVIII, says: ‘That all men, in truth died, are also with Christ buried by baptism into death (Rom. 6:4; Col. 2:12), holding their Sabbath in the grave with Christ.’ And Article XL, ‘That those who have been planted with Christ together in the likeness of his death and burial shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.’ These utterances savor more of immersion than affusion, and yet they were probably written after his Se-Baptism [self baptism], so that its form is left in doubt, with the probability that it was a dipping.

A feeble but strained attempt has been made to show that none of the English Baptists practiced immersion prior to 1641, from the document mentioned by Crosby in 1738, of which he remarks, that it was ‘Said to be written by Mr. William Kiffin.’ Although this manuscript is signed by fifty-three persons, it is evident that its authorship was only guessed at from the beginning, it may or may not have been written by Kiffin. The church referred to was that of which Messrs. Jacob and Lathrop had been pastors, but the fact that a part of this congregation did not know that the immersion of believers had been practiced in England cannot be accepted as decisive proof that all the Baptists were strangers to that practice, still less that it had never been known in England before 1641. It can scarcely be supposed that Leonard Busher should have written in 1614 that Christ ‘commanded ‘those who ‘willingly and gladly’ received ‘the word of salvation to be baptized in the water, that is, dipped for dead in the water,’ and that he neglected to obey that command himself. He calls himself ‘a citizen of London,’ and his style as an English writer, though somewhat unpolished, was equal to the average of his times; he appears to have been acquainted with the Greek Text of the New Testament; he addressed the king (James) and ‘the High Court of Parliament’ as a man who had the right to address them as a ‘citizen,’ and with a full knowledge of English affairs. He speaks of himself and his brethren as: ‘We that have most truth are most persecuted, and therefore most poor,’ and his work bears internal evidence that at some time he had been exiled from his native land for his religion. The ‘Address to the Presbyterian Reader,’ which forms the Introduction of his Treatise, is signed H. B,. supposed to be Henry Burton, and it says of Busher that he was ‘an honest and godly man.’ What the Treatise itself says of Robinson and the Brownists, with these circumstances, all point to the supposition that he was a member of the Baptist Church, formed in London by Helwys in 1612-14. But, in any case, the fair inference from his own words is, that he was an immersed believer nearly thirty years before the MS. to which Crosby refers was written. The following is the text of that paper:

‘1640. 3d mo. The church became two by mutual consent, first half being with. Mr. P. Barebone and ye other half wth. Mr. H. Jessey. Mr. Richd. Blunt wth. him being convinced of Baptism yt. also it ought to be by diping ye Body into ye Water, resembling Burial and riseing again, Col. 2:12; Rom. 6:4: had Sober-Conference about it in ye. Church, and then wth. some of the forenamed, who also were so convinced. And after Prayer and Conference about their so enjoying it, none having so practiced in England to professed believers, and hearing that some in the Nether Lands had so practiced, they agreed and sent over Mr. Richd. Blunt (who understood Dutch) with Letters of Commendation, who was kindly accepted there, and Returned wth. Letters from them; Jo. Batte a Teacher there; and from that Church to such as sent him. 1641. They proceed on therein, viz.: Those persons yt. ware perswaded Baptism should be by diping ye. Body, had mett in two Companies and did intend so to meet after this: all these Agreed to proceed alike together: And then Manifesting (not by any formal Words) a Covenant (wch. Word was Scrupled by some of them) but by mutual desires and agreement each testified: These two Companyes did set apart one to Baptize the rest, so it was solemnly performed by them. Mr. Blunt Baptized Mr. Blacklock, yt. was a Teacher amongst them, and Mr, Blunt being Baptized, he and Mr. Blacklock Baptized ye. rest of their friends yt. ware so minded, and many being added to them they increased much.’

Dr. Featley, author of The Dippers Dipt, born 1582, died 1645, bears direct testimony to the practice of believer’s immersion amongst the Baptists at a much earlier period than 1641. In that year he held a dispute with four Baptists at Southwark; and, as he says, in his dedication to the reader, Jan. 10, 1644, ‘I could hardly dip my pen in any thing but gall,’ we may not suspect him as stating facts within his knowledge to their special advantage. Yet on this subject he says of them: ‘They flock in great multitudes to their Jordans, and both sexes enter into the river, and are dipt after their manner. And as they defile our rivers with their impure washings, and our pulpits with their false prophecies and fanatical enthusiasms, so the presses sweat and groan under the load of their blasphemies. . . . This venomous serpent (verè Solifuga) is the Anabaptist, who, in these latter times, first showed his shining head, and speckled skin, and thrust out his sting near the place of my residence, for more than twenty years.’ He conveys the idea that they had defiled the ‘rivers with their impure washings,’ in being ‘dipt after their manner quite as long as they had defiled ‘our pulpits’ and ‘presses,’ and that near his own residence ‘for more than twenty years.’ To his knowledge, then, they had ‘dipt’ ‘both sexes,’ in the English ‘rivers’ from before A.D. 1624; his whole work treats of them as ‘Dippers,’ who in baptism always ‘dipt,’ and had he known that they had ever done any thing else, he would have been very happy to have charged them with now throwing aside the right method and with taking up the wrong.

When P. Barbour speaks of the way of ‘new baptizing,’ he also speaks of baptism having been ‘in captivity in Babylon;’ which indicates, not that the Baptists had now originated dipping in England, but that they had restored the historical baptism which England had ever known till that time. This he calls ‘God returning to build his tabernacle.’ Smyth himself, in reply to Clifton, calls the baptism of the Baptists ‘new,’ but in what sense? He says: ‘They set up a new or apostolic baptism which Antichrist had overthrown. . . . When all Christ’s visible ordinances are lost, either men must recover them again, or must let them alone.’ The word ‘new’ was customarily applied to reforms in those days. Gov. Bradford calls Smyth’s church at Amsterdam a ‘new communion,’ a term which Bishop Hall applied to the Brownist churches, but neither of them meant that a church was a new device in the earth. The Bishop complains that the Separatists classed the Church of England with the old Church of Rome, saying:

‘The want of noting one poor distinction breeds all this confusion of doctrine and separation of men. For there is one case of a New Church to be called from heathenism to Christianity; another, of a former church to be reformed from errors to more sincere Christianity. . . . This is our case. We did not make a New Church, but mended an old. Your Clifton is driven to this old, by necessity of argument; otherwise he sees there is no avoiding of Anabaptism. . . . Neither is new baptism lawful (though some of you belike of old were in hand with a rebaptization; which, not then speeding, succeedeth now to your shame), nor a new, voluntary, and particular confession of faith besides that in baptism, though very commendable, will ever be proved simply necessary to the being of a church.’

Even Baxter has been called to the stand for the purpose of saying that the Baptists ‘do introduce a new sort of Christianity’ . . . and ‘a new sort of baptism, which the Church of Christ never knew to this day. . . . As if they were raised in the end of the world to reform the baptism and Christianity of all ages, and were not only wiser than the universal Church from Christ till now, but also at last must make the Church another thing.’ When Baxter explains Baxter, whatever else he may mean, he does not mean that dipping was a new device either in England or in Christianity. In defining baptism he writes: ‘The action of the minister on God’s part is to wash the body of the baptized with the water, which, in hot countries, was by dipping them over head, and taking them up.’ Again: ‘It is commonly confessed by us to the Anabaptists, as our commentators declare, that in the Apostles’ time the baptized were dipped over head in the water. . . . We have thought it lawful to disuse the manner of dipping, and to use less water.’ Nor did he think that ‘rebaptism,’ as he calls it, was a ‘new sort of Christianity and baptism,’ for he declared that ‘If any person discovered a minister who baptized him to be no minister’ he might be baptized again; ‘nor would I account it morally twice baptizing, but a physical repeating of that act which morally is but one. Neither did he think that Baptist dipping had made ‘the Church another thing’ in such sense as to cut them off from Christian fellowship. He says: ‘For the Anabaptists themselves, though I have written and said so much against them, as I found that most of them were persons of zeal in religion, so many of them were sober, godly people, who differed from others but in the point of infant baptism, or, at most, in the points of predestination, free-will and perseverance.’ He asks: ‘May Anabaptists, that have no other error, be permitted in church communion? Ans. Yes, and tolerated in their practice also: For 1. They agree with us in all points absolutely necessary to communion. 2. The ancient Christians had liberty either to baptize, or let them stay till age, as they think best: and, therefore, Tertullian and Nazianzen speak against haste: and Augustine and many Christian parents were baptized at age.’ After yielding the whole ground to the Baptists in this way, it is hard to understand what he means by ‘a new sort of baptism, which the Church of Christ never knew to this day,’ unless it be the new line or succession of baptism which Smyth had introduced by baptizing himself.

This is clear enough from P. Barbour’s discourse. After attempting to prove that the baptism of the Roman Catholic Church is valid, he speaks of Smyth’s baptism, protesting that if pure baptism ‘Is nowhere else to be found remaining in the world, there is no ground for this practice of raising baptism: by persons baptizing themselves.’ Instead, There should be ‘a seeking out of the Church where she were to be found, and there receiving the holy obedience of Christ’s baptism as in a right line, and so be added to the Church, and from thence conveying the truth into these parts again where it had ceased. He then tries to show at great length that if baptism be ‘lost and fallen out of the world, and an idol and likeness were in the room of it,’ no persons have the right to attempt a ‘new beginning,’ or ‘go about the raising, erecting, or setting up of it again, without a special commission from God.’ He then complains that those who reject Roman baptism insist on the practice of dipping; ‘and that persons are to be dipped, all and every part to be under the water, for if all the whole person is not under the water, then they hold that they are not baptized with the baptism of Christ. . . .Truly they want a Dipper that hath authority from heaven as had John. . . . I hope when they have further considered this matter they may abate of the fierceness of their opinions, so as to think that baptism under or in the defection may be God’s ordinance, so as there shall be no need of this new dipping,’ which he admits to have been but a revival of the old practice.

Denne put the question of dipping in England in its true light in his public disputation at St. Clement Dane’s church with Mr. Gunning in 1656. At p. 40 he says:

‘Dipping of infants was not only commanded by the Church of England, but also generally practiced in the Church of England till the year 1600; yea, in some places it was practiced until the year 1641, until the fashion altered. . . . I can show Mr. Baxter an old man in London who has labored in the Lord’s Pool many years; converted by his ministry more men and women than Mr. Baxter hath in his parish; yea, when he hath labored a great part of the day in preaching and reasoning, his reflection hath been (not a Sack-possit or a caudle), but to go into the water and baptize converts. . . . I wonder that Mr. Baxter should forget that he hath read in authors, which he deems authentic, who write that Ethelbert King of Kent, with 10,000 men and women, were baptized in Canterbury, upon the 25th of December, in the year 597.’

And the same tone is maintained by ‘R. W.’ in his Declaration against Anabaptists in answer to Cornwall; he says, London, 1644, p. 1:

‘You argue thus, "That which God hath joined together, no man ought to separate, (But faith and baptism, or more properly dipping,) God hath joined together; therefore, faith and baptism (or dipping as the original renders it) no man ought to separate."’